Who is Jackie Kennedy? Did she really bad-mouth Queen Elizabeth inside Buckingham Palace?

Jacqueline Lee Kennedy Onassis was the wife of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. She was also First Lady of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy travelled to London for an extraordinary meeting with the world’s ultimate royals: Queen Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip.

These two women appeared to be friendly in person, but, The Crown depicts some post-visit drama between them.

The Buckingham Palace visit is one of the main highlights of an upcoming season 2, which returns to Netflix December 8. The episode will also feature guest stars Michael C. Hall as JFK and Jodi Balfour as Jackie, alongside Claire Foy‘s Elizabeth and Matt Smith as Philip.

According to The Telegraph, the show will depict Queen Elizabeth picking up on flirting with her husband and Jackie. When Prince Philip also suggests that the first woman would like him to show her around Buckingham palace, Elizabeth retaliated by saying, “It’s my house so I’ll do it.”Although the visit was seemingly going well, the show depicts the Queen later hearing rumors from her equerry that Jackie has been talking ill of her behind her back.

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What Jackie had to say about the Queen?

Lord Plunkett even claimed that the first lady dubbed her as “a middle-aged woman so incurious, unintelligent and unremarkable that Britain’s new reduced place in the world was not a surprise but an inevitability”.

Jackie added that Buckingham Palace was “second rate, dilapidated and sad, like a neglected provincial hotel.” Elizabeth responded by saying, “Well, we must have her again soon.”

And the evening itself was also not without its share of drama. Special allowance had to be made for Jackie’s sister and brother-in-law, Princess Lee Radziwill and Prince Stanislas Radziwill to attend the dinner. Although Lee had married into the Polish royal family (hence the regal titles), she and her husband were on their second and third marriages, respectively.

Divorcées were, according to an old tradition, not invited to state dinners at Buckingham Palace at that time. (The dinner was not at all considered an official state visit. It was expected to follow, but JFK’s assassination two years later in 1963 meant that it never took place.)